Overview

As the province of New Brunswick moves quickly towards a 21^st century learning model, educators are being called to re-evaluate how, and what, information will be delivered to students. This Info-Tech Research Group, sponsored by D-Link, white paper will look at many of the issues arising from the deployment of disruptive technologies in the classroom environment and the corresponding cascade of implications for society, the education ecosystem and across the technology infrastructure. Based on our research of schools, educators and technology deployment this document offers insight and guidance as to how technology can be applied as a disruptive force capable about bringing a pedagogical shift in educating K-12 students.

Future of Education

As this province of New Brunswick moves quickly towards a 21^st century learning model, educators are being called to re-evaluate how, and what information will be delivered to students.

In the one-room schoolhouse of the 19^th and early 20^th century, successful teachers worked individually with many students at different grade levels, advancing each as far as they could base on their personal accord and the students’ abilities. Everyone was exposed to the basic 3Rs, gained a sense of nationalism, and learned to transact equitably with neighbours. Beyond that, there was little uniformity in what had been learned in the classroom; rather a balance was struck between basic skill and the needs of the real world.

The advent of the industrial revolution in the 1920s required evolving the business of education to ensure a standard skill set was taught to amplify our students’ capabilities in science, math, and social studies to produce professionals capable of exploring natural resources, conquering diseases, leading nations through international crisis, and even landing man on the moon.  Teaching became one-to-many and the gauge of success became how high the under-achievers could reach on standardized tests.

Now we find ourselves at another juncture that requires urgent introduction of technology to keep the educational experience aligned with how information is absorbed outside the classroom.  Otherwise the technology initiatives of both K-12 and higher education will trail behind the tools its audience has moved to that are more conducive to how students learn and interact with the world they live in and must serve as members of the 21^st century workforce. The New Brunswick experience suggests that student usage of the internet for on-line learning, communication, collaboration and entertainment is nearly equal to the time each child spends in the classroom being educated. Consequently, teachers must shift from their role as “sage on the stage” (instructor-led) to a “guide on the side” (instructor–assisted) paradigm. This pedagogical shift will be accelerated as students increasingly communicate in real time with information sources and individuals around the world.

The opportunity presented is enormous. If the three parties involved in the education process (administrators, educators, and students) share the effort to re-define the education system, achievement will not be constrained by the proverbial lowest denominator but rather optimized to accelerate the learning smaller groups collaborating via technology can achieve.

This may in fact lead to a redefining of the ‘3Rs’ to resources, research and rights (the acknowledgement of intellectual property, reference, and privacy) that enables more efficient study of the humanities, sciences and trades. By aligning instruction with the pace and capabilities of individuals, and moving beyond measuring average achievement to success oriented accreditation and advancement, the full potential of those being educated can be reached.

To achieve this future state of education it goes without question that technology must (and will) play a defining part.  Based on the work of a number of forward thinking K-12 school districts across Canada and the United States, success-oriented accreditation is not an individual metric. To achieve this technology will be implemented as a disruptive force and herein lie the problems and challenges we face today.

While it is often the device, a computer, iPod, smart phone, net book that is deployed to facilitate a shift from towards a new era of education, it’s the network that becomes the backbone of group collaboration that allows accommodating different learning with multiple approaches, driven by educators guiding individuals into the appropriate eLearning streams to maximize their potential. This is a common mistake made by many case studies of K-12 schools across North America, including the MLTI, illustrates this when one looks at what the school board and educators where attempting to create disruption, but were in fact focused on a technology (the PC or notebook) that was only a piece of the puzzle.

An Example of Achieving Connected Learning: New Brunswick School District 16

To provide evidence of the importance of the network in the 21^st Century classroom we don’t need to look further than some of the experiences documented by New Brunswick’s School District 16. As SD-16 began rolling out end-user technologies, from laptops to smart boards, to enhance the classroom learning experience it became quickly apparent that managing, securing and maintaining these devices was paramount to their distribution.

With the exponential growth of devices on the network the finite amount of technology support staff and budget made the team re-examine the role of technology in the classroom and across the schools of SD-16. Kelly Jacques, SD-16’s Information Systems Manager, cited the growing need for fast, dependable connectivity solutions as critical to handling the needs of students and educators to develop, deliver and distribute digital content from email to IP-video and voice across the school and district. In addition, the growing needs of schools to become increasingly wireless while provisioning enhanced storage and security meant the network would form the foundation for growth and success. As such, the ability to procure and deploy sophisticated, yet affordable networking technology and its ability to then meet the demands of the growing number of devices would dictate the rate of hardware and software deployment.

By concluding the network and its ability to provision software and services to educators and students, Kelly’s team at New Brunswick’s SD-16 supported the deployment of solutions to over 400 instructors and nearly 7,000 students. In April 2007, SMART Technologies Inc. recognized this district’s leadership in the adoption and use of technology that improves student outcomes and teacher effectiveness. It named School District 16 to its SMART Showcase School Program and first global Smart District.

School District 16 has only begun its role in the shift that is happening globally in education. But its focus on the network as the fundamental foundation for creating an interconnected learning experience for all of its stakeholders is a critical step in the road to success. The paper will argue that the stewards of education will be better served by engaging in discussion about the methods of delivering the learning experience (in a manageable and secure manner) rather than becoming too enamoured with the devices used for learning. By embarking in this discussion now we may possibly avoid many of the pitfalls of the past (and well documented) experiences of our peers across Canada and the United States.

The Business and Stewards of Education

Our schools and the stewards that lead them are faced with a task not fully appreciated in private enterprise, the challenge of developing skills not for today’s tasks but those skills, habits and aptitudes that individuals will need for many years in the future – far from the hallways and classrooms and instructors tasked with their education. Moreover, with the changing dynamics of the family nucleus these institutions are relied increasingly to provide moral, emotional and intellectual guidance as well – thus not only forging the skills a person needs to succeed in life but the manner in which they’ll do this as well. Based on trends observed in research for this paper one can conclude that those most responsible for guidance are often trying to do so while in perpetual motion, and all the while their target is also moving in an inexact manner.

Once this superset of the many challenges is grasped one can then begin to formulate a plan for the inclusion of technology as a tool educators can use to formulate and deliver the new and changing paradigms that will enable student achievement for the 21^st Century. These stewards are also responsible for the changes in the education system and how they impact society, their organization and those entrusted into their care. As this group juggles the increasing inclusion of technology into the classroom school they must ensure technology is aligned with their business.

The “business of education” and the role of leaders in this professional can be narrowed down to three critical areas, these are:

1. Enabling student achievement;
2. Facilitating collaboration across the education ecosystem; and
3. Financial accountability.

The implementation of technology as a successful toolset must address these roles and metrics must be put in place to ensure that this new toolset continually improves each of these roles individually and collectively. In the following section challenges of each of these roles will be discussed and guidance will be offered as to how they can be applied to effect the changes they were intended and empower educators and students to excel in today’s classroom and tomorrow’s society.

Enabling Student Achievement

Studies from ESRI, The International Society for Technology in Education and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario indicate that computer aided learning is expected to make up nearly 50% of coursework in the United States by 2019. Given Canada’s proximity and geographic distribution of students and educators is not expected to be far behind on this trend.

While this document talked about a pedagogical shift in education taking place that would change metrics around achievement to success-oriented paradigms, equality of access to education for students will still be paramount to this and any future government. Thus we can assume that the pressure for technology to interconnect students with educators and peers will continue to proliferate.

In the 21^st century classroom the administrators, educators and support teams will need to work together to redefine the skills developed in their classrooms and the tools in which these are taught, catalogued and shared. Public Private Partnerships between school boards, private industries and technology players will need to be forged to deduce how technology and education can be deployed in a manner that allows young minds living in a stable, modern economy to tackle the challenges they will face in their lifetimes. One expects the result to be a combination of contributing to the local and national welfare of the state, yet at the same time addressing green and sustainability trends that will potentially lead to the next industrial revolution, all the while learning to cohabitate in an increasingly interconnected global village.

Investments being made, like the one in New Brunswick, will require educators to understand technology and the complex multitasking student they have been presented with. Rather than periodic testing of standardized materials the savvy school will invest in educator and student tools geared toward staged learning that students can master at their pace or in stride with technology augmented course and educator interaction.

The reason for this is simple. People learn differently and thus we achieve milestones at different times. The role of the school board is to facilitate learning, not govern (e.g. limit) the speed at which people learn based on intellectual, social or other dispositions. Rather, schools should empower those that are learning to proceed in a constructive manner that covers the core tenants of education, but in the 21^st century classroom, also allows for creativity, collaboration and construction of new ideas that add value to future generations.

Collaboration across Boundaries

From a business standpoint the classroom of the 21^st century is about facilitating collaboration across and within administration, educators and students. As we see growing interest in students learning from one another and learning from peers locally, nationally, and globally, we must invest in a network that supports access to a proverbial walled garden of virtual meeting places where information can be securely shared, authored, and amended by individuals and the community.

In many schools this has begun with virtual notice boards, classroom portals, school intranets and provincial or state portals. These have been an important first step, but like in private enterprise these quickly turn from watering holes of knowledge into marshes of aging or incomplete data. In fact, if one reviews many of the challenges faced in the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, these sites quickly became quagmires that are avoided equally by all parties. Technology that is tied solely to these becomes shunned or set aside.

With over a decade of research in the MTLI, the Florida technology initiative as well as other documents across the internet, the province of New Brunswick should look to a combination of structured open-source tools for content management and collaboration as well as emerging Web-based productivity tools, such as Google Apps, to drive the acceptance further accelerate the interconnectedness of the education with the educated.

Financial Accountability

The success for schools can rest on their ability to provide world class education on a budget. Spending the time to think creatively and leveraging relationships across the education ecosystem to overcome physical and financial challenges is critical.

Too often many of the case studies reviewed for this paper based their 21^st century classroom strategies on enabling students and educators with devices. While devices are critical (e.g. paper and pen) the deployment of them without proper thought being given to the delivery of the software, remote management, and proliferation of network access often resulted in mid to long-term disillusionment.

Schools are entrusted with limitless expectations in turning out the future of society. The finances needed to achieve this, however, can be paltry. Therefore, while an equitable distribution of technology devices is crucial to success, schools should ensure that proper time is spent budgeting for tools that provision, manage, secure and interconnect these devices with the applications needed to deliver the investments being made.

Finally, educating the educators and staff on the use of technology is critical. One of the best practices cited in many case studies is the empowerment of students to support not only each other but also the school’s staff on technology issues and problems. While this is attractive from a cost and user motivation perspective it still relies on an unstable human element. Depending on that support person to have the answers, be in attendance and to “do the right thing” all the time is a bit of a gambit. Rather it is advisable to encourage this, but also empower a centralized team to manage, support and allocate resources and technology needed to deliver a consistent and dependable experience.

There are many lessons that can be learned around financial accountability and the deployment of technology from the private sector. In a recent case study of the Blue Mountain Resorts in Ontario, a billion dollar resort with a flexible staff ranging from 600-1600 over the course of a year was supported by seven IT staff. In the case of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board in Mississauga, over 6000 users are supported by less than four full-time people.

The message here is simple. To conquer financial accountability must be applied by tasking the same IT steering committee developed to define, design and deploy the 21^st century classroom. This committee should also investigate the costs associated with many of your peers in public and private sectors and balance the need for technology with the costs of deployment, management and sustaining the experiences it may bring.

Technology for Good

As teachers prepare to set students free on the Web, to develop virtual global networks, and pursue interests ranging from Michelangelo to Einstein, the discussion quickly turns to access to technology. In New Brunswick, educators are discussing how computers, such as netbooks, can be applied in the classroom and at home to allow students to develop, interact and collaborate on multimedia projects, on coursework, and explore not only their surroundings but the world at large via the World Wide Web.

New Brunswick is not alone in this venture. As previously discussed, the research that went into this document looked at initiatives like the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, Florida’s Technology Initiative, Quebec’s Eastern Township laptop initiative, and more. What was commonly deduced was that while it’s important to discuss how technology can advance research skills, the adoption of technology hinges on many factors that are often assumed rather than planned.

Some of the most overlooked questions were:

• How will we build an environment that will foster this delivery method?
• Where will the access to school and external social networking sites fit?
• How can we manage the applications, security, storage and networked communications?

In the following sections, this paper will attempt to discuss each of these in more detail and postulate solutions and methods that can be used to overcome them in a practical and tactical manner.

Technology Environment of the 21^st Century Classroom

Some of the key trends in education are virtualization, distance learning, group collaboration, and e-learning. All of these rely on different technologies to achieve the proposed benefit for students and teachers alike. Based on research on school districts that deployed technology, too often their projects began with end-user devices in mind. With costs continuing to plummet, user savvy interfaces, and form factors that can easily be adopted, it was often easy to displace classical technology (e.g. books) with devices that merely replicated the services that books (and pens and paper) have addressed for centuries.

It quickly became apparent that devices alone could not have a demonstrable affect if they were not enabled with software that aligned to the goals of the educational institution and its courses. Yet even there, many of the pilot programs studies that were used as a reference for this document showed that software only digitized the current curriculum and did little to innovate, disrupt or meet the changing learning habits of the target audience.  While there was a call for learning software that was as interesting as the computer games that children play on a regular basis, these have been slow to market and often are considered cost prohibitive to most educational institutions and their students. Nonetheless, over the past decade the movement to open-source software, delivered via the Internet, has begun to change this. Yet, many instructors and school boards who invested in hardware solutions as a first have found themselves wary of renewing technology-driven education initiatives.

It’s with this in mind that school boards that are embarking on current 21^st century education efforts need to be careful to consider all the aspects of the technology ecosystem and the direct and indirect costs associated. That ecosystem is made up of three categories those being:

1. Software
2. Networking
3. Devices

Each of which vary in criticality of empowering all the stakeholders of the education ecosystem; this includes administrators, educators, students, parents, public sector and private enterprise, in achieving the desired result of evolving and impacting future society.

There are sufficient reference studies available to discuss both software and devices and this paper links to many of these in the reference section, therefore this document will focus on a critical aspect often overlooked but which has immediate and measureable impact on the success and outcomes of any 21^st century education efforts. That is the network and its role in delivering, protecting and interconnecting devices, people and information.

The Interconnected Experience

The growth of interconnected devices has multiplied at staggering rates since the end of the 20^th century. It’s hard to imagine life without smart phones, Wi-Fi, social media, email, YouTube, Wikipedia or Google, yet most of these technologies are not even as old as today’s teenagers.

Without a robust network, information cannot be shared, stored, or communicated. Without a manageable network the limited IT staff of any organization cannot support their users, devices, and prioritize the flow of information and data between people, places or machines. Without a secure network, ideas may become lost, trust does not exist, and privacy cannot be maintained. Without a wireless network, the freedom to engage, transact, and collaborate becomes contained and limited.

The most critical challenge in deploying technology tools for the 21^st century is building a network infrastructure that melds cost effectiveness with robust scalability and flexibility to change with the needs of its users.

The majority of the studies of 21^st century education talked to challenges that arose from devices not being used to support the curriculum, enable students with timely resources, and enable educators with access to new ideas and tools. Another was the failure to deliver administration with documented milestones being met. In many of these, including the MLTI, this was a result of the computers not having delivered consistent user experience and not being online when they needed to be. Not being connected was a larger issue than not having power, hardware failure, theft, damage, or dated software.

By deploying technology, typically laptops, schools are willing to risk damage, theft, and depreciation because they understand the value a computing device can bring. Surprisingly in many cases (at least based on the documentation) the criticality of interconnecting users with one another where the computer was just an aspect of the learning experience was missed. Too many times computers were replacing books. Yet there is nothing wrong with books and they fit the existing education model better then computers. So when educators, students and/or administrators applied computers in this manner the pedagogical shift expected did not happen.

Herein lays the wisdom of early adopters and frontier schools of the 21^st century. Computers are not disruptive if they are not connected. The network is the disruption! Much like books were not disruptive before the printing press, computers and like devices can only enhance the education experience if they are used to communicate, collaborate and instrument change across boundaries. Those boundaries are between individuals, organizations and nations.

The 21^st century will see these young minds evolve based on how an education system prepared them to converse, transact, and invent based on new rules and new requirements of a changing world. Educators will adopt tools that help them engage those entrusted to them in these conversations and will embrace a success-oriented model rather than an achievement –oriented model based on their experiences in seeing tangible results from their students, classes and schools. Parents will seek these advantages to ensure their children are equipped to thrive in a world that does not have a history and in markets that extend beyond the horizon. Finally, both private and public sector institutions will benefit from an age where students are graduated with the social, moral and technology constructs to contribute and lay a foundation for future generations.

Summary

As we touched on in the document, our future leaders are growing up in a connected world. They are sharing ideas globally by the age of 6 and continuing to learn at their own pace throughout their lifetime.

As discussed earlier, Kelly Jacques and School District 16 came to the early realization that deploying, managing and sustaining an increasingly diverse technology infrastructure is complex and costly. With limited budgets many hard choices had to be made around the technology used to facilitate the classroom experience equally for students and educators which led to many innovative uses of software and hardware to meet needs and expectations.

One compromise that could not be made was the quality and flexibility of the network. Provisioning wired speeds of gigabit speed, managing multiple locations that included both wired and wireless access, and deploying redundancy for real time back-up and security were all critical service features.  The School District turned to D-Link to provide expertise and tools needed to address these and still connect to the provincial back bone. By doing so Kelly and his limited IT resources have positioned themselves and their schools well for the adoption of the 21^st Century Classroom initiative in New Brunswick.

References, Resources and Recommended Reading

• The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE®) http://www.iste.org/
• HP’s Teacher Experience Program http://h30411.www3.hp.com/?jumpid=ex_r33_go_teacherexperience_EDU
• D-Link and Education: http://www.dlink.ca/category/solutions/?cid=68
• Eastern Townships School Board Launches Canada’s First Board-wide Laptop Program http://www.etsb.qc.ca/news/eastern-townships-school-board-launches-canadas-first-board-wide-laptop-program-7.aspx
• Disrupting Class http://www.claytonchristensen.com/
• Maine Learning Technology Initiative http://www.maine.gov/mlti/index.shtml
• Overview of Technology in Florida’sK-12 Public School System School http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/pdf/K-12%20Overview%2001-02.pdf
• 1 to 1 Learning: A Review and Analysis by the Metiri Group http://www.metiri.com/
• Laptops for Learning Final Report and Recommendations of the Laptops for Learning Task Force March 22, 2004 http://etc.usf.edu/l4l/report.pdf
• Global Higher Education Report 2005 http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/Global2005.pdf
• The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/Pages/Default.aspx
• ESRI Canada http://www.esricanada.com/en_education/default.asp
• Canadian Network for Innovation in Education CNIE http://www.cnie-rcie.ca/?q=node/148
• A Snapshot State of the Nation Study: K-12 Online Learning in Canada http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/NACOL_CanadaStudy-lr.pdf
• Youtube.com/21stCenturyNB’s Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/21stCenturyNB
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy
• http://nbbusinessjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/1064838
• http://blogs.itbusiness.ca/2010/06/new-brunswick-releases-21st-century-learning-plan/
• Canadian School Library Association (CSLA)  http://www.cla.ca/casl/literacyneeds.html
• Education Evolving http://www.educationevolving.org/content_view_all
• Wireless Generation http://www.wirelessgeneration.com/
• Democracy in Education http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/media/mar27.htm
• Joel H. Spring (multiple sources) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spring
• A Nation at Risk, U.S. Department of Education http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/intro.html
• U.S. Department of Education http://www.ed.gov/
• Council of Ministers of Education, Canada http://www.cmec.ca/Pages/default.aspx

I recently read a blog entitled “Why we cannot get CRM (and SCRM) right” that triggered several thoughts; not as much on CRM but with regards to a challenge I used to face when ‘us’ marketeers wanted to try something drastically new. The more I thought I realized the problem (that I’ll try to illustrate below) is often the result of a company attempting to adopt a technology without having clearly understood the challenges that their users might face when using this technology, its limitations, and/or the process/guidelines that already existing in their environment.

In the following, I’ll share a bit about my experiences trying new things, having access to technology that can (and in some cases cannot) help me, but most importantly finding out (often in midstream) that there are junctures in making the idea become reality that conflict directly with existing business operation procedures.

Before striking out on my own, and during two years of emerging ’social’ trends, great ideas would emerge on how to use social channels to reach our clients, partners and prospects. We’d engage in lively discussions with our ad co.s, PR teams (internal and external) and others across the organization. We’d mock up how we could be truly creative and daring and use both our co.s technology and emerging ’social’ web-tools (Facebook, Twitter, Live.com, etc.) to raise awareness, start discussions and (hopefully) engage the community and have some fun while doing so.

Then when we went to turn ideas to actions we found ourselves caught in a quagmire of many of the business operations procedures. Part of the business like legal, privacy, finance, etc that had to be consulted would have lists of objection that would be counter to our business plans. Here is a hypothetical project example.

One of the first we’d run into was our legal dept., and they’d raise concerns about who’d have access to the data, what contributors across the business, partner community and customer (and prospects) might share with regards to personal, business or product information. Whether this was good, bad, risky, etc. Who owned this (the concept of community ownership doesn’t sit well with LCA folks). And of course could we (the co.) be sued b/c of any, some or all of these. Did any notice, competition, brand usage comply with the companies rules and regulations… the list went on and the quagmire of being daring became a real tough uphill battle.

Heck here is what a tweet (with feedback from LCA) would have looked like:

#nopurchaseneccessary #viewsarenotthatofXXXXXXXXX #plsreadprivacystmt http://ow.ly/1vabA – that is 88 of 140 characters used for compliance & regs — we have not even begun to tweet a simple message and action…

Further there are privacy and financial regulations about who we could use for these types of campaigns – even if we could get through LCA the more creative upstarts (for social media marketing) where typically not on the “approved vendor list”. Not that a large multinational 1980s advertising company couldn’t come up with something new and innovative, after all they did get billg to ‘wiggle his butt’, but the time and costs involved often created their own challenges.

Then there is the technology component. A well executed marketing campaign must have measurable results. Thus even if you got all the ducks in a row you still had to often figure out how to get the information, contacts, leads that you gathered and nurtured into the companies systems. Data pull, old CRM systems and processes, individual spreadsheets all would do their best to thwart these efforts. Then how do you disseminate the data to your partners and sales teams…

In the end, too many ideas were lost to the roadblocks I’ve mentioned above.

This brings me back to the post I mentioned at the title of the article and to quote the blog I mentioned, “The bottom line is that CRM is about companies engaging in relationships with customers.” However, I would like to add that relationships are very complicated these days with many moving parts. Whereas, start-ups and small companies, like mine, can be more flexible here – larger companies can but have many hurdles they must overcome in order to do so. There are good reasons for this, but complying with these may result in large companies continuing to seem more and more stodgy, slow and boring. None of these terms is often used in corp branding – wonder why?

I’d therefore like to offer my experiences (hopefully this post wasn’t too much of a rant) so that midsize and large companies who are looking to update their CRM solutions will think abut involving more of their business in the selection of CRM tools, but most importantly in the pre-implementation discussion about what they are trying to do when it comes to customer engagement for the long term. How do trends and new technology impact this and how does the business work together to overcome from the beginning rather then midstream.

Further, consider how you’d like to deliver your message given the changing marketing and sales channels. e.g. what conversation(s) do you want to start and by whom. Use input from legal, privacy, and the data analysis teams on how they can support the marketing, sales and customer service efforts and then develop  plans of what CRM means to the business rather than investing in a good tool, but limited in the ways you may be able to use it.

Face it. How many of us use Word anymore?

We still use Excel and PowerPoint, but writing is seldom done in Word anymore. It’s done in email and on the web. We write, more often than not, to share ideas. Word has evolved into Outlook – or more realistically – the multitude of email applications and text editing software products have come crashing together. Combine this with the plethora of ‘free’ text editors, both on and off-line that do all the things we need to post (blog, publish and email) and share (email, tweet, and instant messaging) information in a one to many format, and the drive to use a text editor isolated from the web just doesn’t make sense.

What has sparked this change? After a bit of web research, it seems the amount of reading has continues to decrease while the amount we are exposed to increases. An interesting write up (but not the only one) on this can be found here . To summarize, people are addicted to information – the more the better. At the same time we have become woefully impatient readers and want ideas encapsulated into snippets we can re-tweet’ at will. We constantly search for a grand idea that adds value or validates our own and with any luck may help yet another person make a decision that creates more information (adding to the global conversation) for us to access and share in a never ending cycle.

But I digress, my point is that we write (via email, messenger, tweets, blogs, etc.) to share our ideas with others and solicit feedback. And technology is evolving to meet our needs. The rise in social media based is based partially on inability of email to keep up with how we communicate to larger and larger audiences. Micro-blogging services combined with social media (Facebook, Twitter, instant messenger clients, etc.) are supplanting our use of emails to communicate with friends, family and co-workers. Furthermore what writing we do is being augmented by multimedia (pictures, audio, and video) to become more interactive resulting in conversations that are more compelling to our audience.  As such, this decade promises to take the preferred mode of communication in the digital age to the next level.

We have started to see products like Google’s Wave, IBM’s Lotus Live and Microsoft’s Office Live take form in an effort to make the sharing and collaborating of information and people more real-time. SAP, a world leader in structured business applications, seems to see an opportunity to provide its customers and the market with a solution for visually and graphically sharing what the other person is seeing, reading and conversing about. Nurturing the ability of many folks to generate and exchange ideas on a subject based on the information they are exposed to and expressing this to others in a means that are easier to follow.

SAP’s response to this model is interesting as they are the first large company that hails from a structured, data-centric world to offer a collaborative tool that is inherently based on the unstructured world of digital conversations.  Their product, tentatively called StreamWork (nee 12 Sprints) , is very un-SAP in that 1) its free and 2) its build to be used across web-platforms like Evernote, Discussit, and more products without the use of propriety code or back office development.

In my opinion, the up-side for SAP and StreamWOrk is huge. First, people can start seeing SAP as more than just a company that provides core business applications, but also a partner that facilitates the conversations between employees, customers and partners. Second, StreamWork can bring value from the wealth of business and customer data locked in business applications, databases, and the web by creating a simple form factor for sharing ideas. Finally, by allowing people across an organization or ecosystem to collectively share their opinions new products and services can be brought to market and change/customer benefits accelerated.

Much like my experience trying Google’s Wave I am still waiting for people to ‘wave back’, yet given my experiences with other social tools (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc) I have no doubt that one day I will wonder why we had email (in much the same way I wonder why we ever used Fax machines). While I don’t think that alone SAP will make Word irrelevant, it is now part of a pack that together quickly is changing the way we communicate with one another. And it’s my opinion it’s better to be on that bus than not.

In closing, SAP is taking a big gamble on how its brand and services are perceived by the market in an effort to gain share in the collaborative market. But with great risks comes great reward.

Note: Updated 12Sprints to SAP’s official name “StreamWork” on March 23, 2010.

Resources:

http://sapstreamwork.com/

http://12sprints.com/

http://www.youtube.com/12sprints#p/

Http://www.google.com/wave

http://www.officelive.com/en-us/

http://www.evernote.com/

http://www.google.com/buzz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software

http://www.hyperoffice.com/index.php

http://www.google.com/apps/

http://www.sap.com

https://www.lotuslive.com/en/